[opencms-dev] WYSIWYG editor

[Joe Desbonnet]

I just had a session with an end user of an OpenCms installation.  I
was surprised at the number of problems I had. This was my first time
letting an "ordinary" user near the system.
I find these sessions very interesting because it exposes flaws that I
would never spot myself.

I know there are no easy answers to some of the issues presented here,
but I think it's worth documenting. Most of my problems were relating
to the  WYSIWYG editor (which I never use myself -- I always work in
the HTML view).


1. Firefox, my browser of choice, is useless because I can't reliably
paste into the WYSIWYG view. This is not an OpenCms issue: it's a
security restriction in Firefox. Firefox directs the user to
instructions which only an admin/experienced computer user can follow
(see this link:
http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/securityprefs.html ). Even if
you do follow these instructions it still does not work. What's
particularlly odd is that it sometimes does work and sometimes
doesn't. I have no idea why. Is anyone out there using Firefox for
WYSIWYG editing?

2. Next problem: when I do manage to cut/paste successfully (eg from
Outlook or MS Word) far to much unnecessary formatting info gets
copied. The underlying HTML is riddled with stuff like    < p
class="MsoNormal"> <span..> <span><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->
<!--[endif]--><o:p /></span></p> etc etc. I have found when the
underlying code is full of this rubbish the editor formatting tools
(eg font size selection etc) does not work reliably. Does anyone have
suggestions on a set of instructions I can give the end users to avoid
this kind of problem?

3. Files prefixed with tilde (eg ~index.html).   My end user today
clicked on "~index.html" to edit a home page. I told him that was
wrong, but to click on "index.html" instead. He asked why these files
appeared there. I started muttering something about "vi" and unix
editors and quicky shut up when I realized I could not give him a
satisfactory answer... I realize these are temporary files which
should be removed if the editor is closed properly. But often the
editor window is closed by killing the window and these files are left
lying around to confuse users. Are they really necessary?


BTW: I am not really complaining -- I think OpenCms is a great
product. If some of these rough edges can be fixed and and the
documenation expanded it would be a truely fantastic piece of
software.

Regards,
Joe.